Bees!

With typical panache and imagination, Artizani and Avanti Display collaborate on a new walkabout performance and installation.

WALKABOUT

Two devotees of the esteemed bee carry the deluxe hive with the greatest care! Once set down, the public are called to step forward: Hear the BEE! Feel the Bee! Smell the Bee! Taste the Bee! And if you dare, put your eye up to the hive and See the Bee! With a hilarious sting in the tail this is a miniature installation with a huge visual impact.

INSTALLATION

An installation of six hives all hiding a unique interior world. They all look fairly similar but each one contains a unique and unexpected interior installation, some with high spec digital technology – others relying on more traditional means.

Audiences wander amongst the honey-perfumed Bee Colony, occasionally cloaked in smoke, finding a variety ways of viewing and interacting with the contents. In each there is a surprising conceptual twist, which challenges, charms and confounds expectations – you may find yourself looking into the vastness of space, or teased by a telescopic hive soaring into the air. The installation is tended by ethereal beekeepers and atmospherically lit when performed at night.

The installation is designed to be multi- sensory, engaging spectators through taste, smell and touch as well as sight and hearing. It presents a clear and resonant but with a frisson of danger – the hives are realistic and might just contain stinging insects – do you really want to put your eye up to that hole?

Although each hive is designed for only one or two people to see inside at a time, the experience is designed to be short, being reinforced artistically through visiting the whole colony, and witnessing the reactions of those who see it before or after you. At the Norwich and Norfolk Festival (with six Hives) we had audiences of up to 700 people an hour.

The Bees investigates the complex symbiotic relationship humans have with bees. It is beautiful, humorous, and thought provoking.